A new design method to improve flow uniformity in a reaction injection mold entry

Reaction injection molding involves the injection of two or more kinds of liquid polymers into a mold at relative high speed. Such high inertia effect may result in air pocket inside the mold or non-uniform velocity distribution. How to design the mold entry geometry to provide uniform velocity distribution becomes one of the major topics in reaction injection molding process. Thus a new and simple method was developed in this work to optimize the reaction mold entry design. Several regulation islands were located in a fish tail entrance to help distribute the flow more even. Dimensions and locations of the islands will affect the flow uniformity, and become the factors experiments coupled with to be optimized. Taguchi's design of computer flow simulation was used to achieve die geometry of different dimensions of the islands oil the timization. Effects of flow uniformity can also be evaluated through statistical analyses in the flow simulation. Flow visualization. technique was done by capturing flow images with high speed CCD. The experimental results showed very good agreements with the Fluent simulation results. The design methodology proposed here can help the molders in designing different reaction injection mold entries for better uniformity and performance.